How to Improve Your Ford F150 Towing and Load Carrying Performance

Owning a Pickup Truck Looks and Feels Much Different to 20 Years Ago

Aside from an obviously much more modern aesthetic, you’ll be hard pressed to find a non-commercial fleet vehicle with a regular cab. Mega cabs, crew cabs, quad cabs, extended cabs, king cabs (or whatever the manufacturer decides to call the truck with the second row of seating) have become the standard to increase passenger space. Interiors have become much more quiet and luxurious, more trim packages have become available, and comfort and safety has greatly improved. All of this has made pickups extremely versatile and much more marketable as family vehicles.

Trying to Appeal to a Broader Market

Perhaps the biggest improvement over the last 20 years that can actually be felt, is everyday ride quality and comfort. The Big 3 manufacturers have all purposely gone towards a softer suspension package over the years, a strategy to appeal to a broader market. Ford has dominated the pickup truck market for years with its F-Series lineup. The hottest and best selling pickup among them is the Ford F150. Unless you’re looking for a work truck, the F150 is much more practical and offers much better ride quality than the heavier duty F250 and F350. Take an F150 for a test drive and it’s hard not to be impressed with the comfort and ride quality you experience. However, if you plan on using the F150 as a tow vehicle, simply looking at what might appear to be impressive max payload and towing capacity number won’t tell the whole story. Though you may still be within the max payload and towing capacity numbers on the sticker, chances are you’ll still experience substantial rear truck squat and instability. This is the flip side of that nice, quiet, soft stock ride.

Sometimes You Just Have to Haul

This begs a series of questions to the truck owners who experience this issue: How can I keep my F150 from squatting when towing or hauling? What is the best F150 rear suspension upgrade available for towing my trailer? Are F150 helper springs or F150 airbags a good way to keep my truck from squatting? What are the pluses and minuses of each?

If you’ve got a trailer you’re hooking up at the hitch, the weight distribution hitch is one of the most obvious and necessary assists you’ll need to add. But many times even adding this by itself will not be enough to deal with the squat and instability issues. One major factor that most will want to take into account if you’re weighing traditional helper springs versus suspension air bags; you’ve got to be careful with your choice as these products may stiffen up that nice stock ride that you and your family have grown used to. Why buy and install a product that is meant to fix a problem that you only experience when you are towing or hauling (maybe 5% of the time), if it’s going to negatively affect your ride quality and driving experience the other 95% of the time? Some suspension upgrades such as suspension air bags are especially notorious for being highly involved and requiring maintenance and many people complain that helper springs stiffen the stock ride of their trucks. You’ve spent too much money on your truck already, so choose wisely!

The Smart Choice

The RoadActive Suspension kit is the only rear leaf spring upgrade that is guaranteed to maintain and even improve upon the stock ride at all times. It continues to grow in popularity and garner rave reviews from F150 owners on every corner of the internet for this very reason. The active suspension system has become extremely popular for late model F150’s. Its uniquely designed variable rated tension coil spring engages proportionate to the weight that is being added or force applied. The result? The most well rounded rear pickup truck suspension upgrade on the market. You’ll get rid of that rear truck squat, greatly improve traction and handling while reducing excessive truck bounce and sway. You get to maintain that beautiful unloaded stock ride, while simultaneously adding that critical strength you’ll need as you add weight to the bed or hitch. Even better, this is a solution that is easily installed in less than an hour and requires absolutely no maintenance.

Find your F150 kit now.